More than 1,700 children classified as urgent were left waiting for an appointment beyond the four-week target, according to an internal audit at Children’s Health Ireland (CHI).
The review also found another 2,450 referrals that had not been ‘triaged’ within five days as required under national protocols, reports Breaking News.
The audit revealed that 1,706 urgent referrals were older than 28 days without receiving an appointment.
Under national waiting list protocols, all of these patients should have been seen within four weeks, reports Breaking News.
A sample of cases showed unscheduled appointments, cancellations by parents not yet rescheduled, and some cases that had been addressed by the time of the report.
The 2024 internal audit, released under FOI laws, also identified 5,088 “semi-urgent” referrals left for 13 weeks without a scheduled appointment, reports Breaking News.
There were an additional 15,506 non-urgent referrals delayed beyond the protocol timeframes.
The report noted: “Capacity issues mean that these two categories of triage tend to experience the greatest delays,” reports Breaking News.
Auditors also found 295 appointments cancelled by a CHI hospital that had not yet been rescheduled.
Seventy-seven of these involved patients categorised as urgent, with some cancellations dating back to 2022 and 2023, reports Breaking News.
The audit explained: “The sample reviewed indicated that hospital cancelled appointments have not been rescheduled due to capacity issues.”
It also identified 491 referrals for patients over 16, despite policy that such cases should not be accepted, reports Breaking News.
Many of these were added to waiting lists around their sixteenth birthday, or the date of birth had been entered incorrectly.
The review found that while improvements were underway, issues remained regarding how patients were scheduled.
CHI’s overall outpatient waiting list management process was rated as “adequate” by the internal audit, reports Breaking News.
“Considerable issues were identified as part of waiting list data review which need to be improved over the coming months,” the internal auditor said.
The audit recommended better procedures for timely review of triaged referrals and improved scheduling for urgent, semi-urgent, and non-urgent appointments, reports Breaking News.
It warned that waiting list issues could cause CHI “reputational damage due to negative public opinion” and “risk of poor morale for employees due to heavy clinical demands.”
In response, CHI management said regular meetings were being held and that providing extra appointment capacity was a “daily priority,” reports Breaking News.
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